I don't have the strongest stomach and it's normal for me to get a bit of an unsettled tummy when I travel around and drink tap water from different countries where the water is safe. My own theory is that each location has its own colonies of safe microbes and bacteria which the locals get used to and which most visitors are unaffected by.

As someone living in London I would not expect to have any problems at all drinking the water in Ireland (I haven't yet been affected). However, I might very well have a couple of days of looser stools if I were to drink the tap water from your home in Miami - no matter how 'safe' the water is there.

So the answer I would give is that the water in Ireland is completely fine. But if you want to stay on the safe side you might want to stick to bottled/filtrated/boiled water. What is very unlikely is that you would actually get seriously ill by drinking Irish water.

I saw this product yesterday at the London, Camden branch of Wholefoods:http://www.waterbobble.com/
Seems to offer lightly filtered water at around 5cents a bottle. It's available from amazon.com and is cheaper in the USA than in Europe.
Could be just the thing you're after.

The water in Ireland is perfectly safe to drink right out of the tap. When you are in the western counties with lots of peat bogs the water may have a clear but rusty look, but it is still safe to drink, it is simply caused by the filtering of rainwater through the bog layers. Away from the peat bogs the water is no different that the water in the US in color. There is also the availability of bottle water by such companies as Ballygowan, which is at least packaged in recyclable glass bottles, but there really is no reason you "need" to buy bottled water.

Thanks Eileen and Loretta, I appreciate the good advice. I did travel to England over 22 years ago and I do not remember having any concerns about drinking the water. I stayed with extended family the entire time and had a blast. When I traveled to Israel, I remember drinking only bottled water and being very careful. I think that memory is what I was thinking about and created the confusion. A lot of people in Miami won't drink the tap water but there are no problems with the quality or safety of the water. It does taste different to visitors.

Interesting insights by both Loretta and Eileen. I wish I had known about the bogs when I was in Ireland 15 years ago. When we stayed in a charming country hotel somewhere in the west, I was shocked when the bath water ran brown. I thought it was rust in old pipes and opted for a sponge bath.

In Texas, I brushed my teeth with bottled water because the hotel tap water smelled like a gas station.

Other tourists would have been delighted to find their bath water brown and brimming with all the nutrients and minerals from ancient peatlands. People pay good money to wallow in this sort of water when the hotel calls itself a spa destination :D

I've been to a few public baths in Tokyo where the water was black. Initially I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to rinse myself after soaking in it, then I got used to it and was happy to let the minerals stay on my skin. My skin always feels noticeably softer after bathing in this kind of spa water.